Rouse Family Adventures

Is a bear catholic? Does the pope shit in the woods?! Heck yeah I'll go to Hawaii for a work trip.  Brandon and Annabelle joined me on the trip, excited for an adventure and for pineapples.  For two weeks  I was sent out to a oily red field covered in weeds during crappy weather while Brandon was killing it being a dad. The hotel pool was a three foot deep oasis for small kids - complete with an artificial waterfall and rock structure to jump off of. Brandon spent so much time in the pool his balls were soon saturated like two water logged raisins.  Annabelle learned how to swim so well she soon equaled Michael Phelps- but like Michael Phelps in little red ladybug lifejacket.  They took her swimming skills into the wild and Brandon soon had her swimming to shore from the paddle board and ocean snorkeling.  She was very excited about snorkeling,  Annabelle instructed " you put your breather in your mouth then go under water and look for stuff like fish ...

Team Rouse has been running again.  With winter descending upon us we're discussing what event we should run next (and also more philosophical questions like why are we running and what are we running from). While out running, Brandon 'ran' into the Mount Erie runners a local group of legit trail runners. We couldn't believe we've never ran into any of the 40 bad ass trail runners crushing the most heinous trails that Anacortes has to offer. Probably because these guys are fast, and they're so legit, they trail-run at night. So, we started running with this group- a fast group for Brandon and a nice group of lady runners for Lisa.  The pace of a runner appears to be related to the length of their shorts. The shorter the runner shorts the faster their pace.  After daylight savings time all that was left of the Mount Erie Running group was runners wearing shorts, well above the thigh.  Lisa  just kept getting dropped and all she could see was a blur of  reall...

Fall is upon us which means it's about to be dreadfully dark and rainy for 5 months straight. Which  means it's time to get out of here and squeeze in one more biking trip.  We half ass planned a trip to go ride the rest of the Oregon scenic bikeways on our tandem and van camp in between. Since the trip was planned half ass planned -we threw a bunch of random shit in the van without a real plan including our mountain bikes and  a bunch of camping chairs that were totally in our way that we used once.  Because if you  have less of a plan more shit can compensate for that. Really it was less than quarter ass planned, but no one uses that terminology so for simplicity we will stick with half assing with a lot of things packed into that van.  Our asses started on a trail dubbed Tualtin Valley Scenic byway. Our "plan" was to camp at a campground near the middle and ride out and backs over two days to cover the 100 mile route. We had a real campground planned- ma...